PUTNAM COUNTY — For three days last week, county deputies and
corrections officers took advantage of an innovative simulated video
training course. Offered through the County Risk Sharing Authority,
which provides Putnam County with its liability insurance, this training
module gave county deputies and corrections personnel the ability to
act out common scenarios and then assess their actions. A demonstration
of the training was attended with the county commissioners, with a
number of different scenarios explored.

The focus on the training is de-escalation, as explained by
Steve Flory of County Line Firearms who was contracted by CORSA to
provide the training, “We’re only allowing, with rare exception, 25
percent of these scenarios to end up with a fatal confrontation. Can
they go one way or another? Yeah. But, we’re trying to design it so
we’re not shooting the heck out of everything, and we’re using our heads
more than getting guns out all the time.”

While watching one of
the training scenarios unfold, Flory walks everyone through how the
different possibilities can be played out, “This guy [on the screen] is
so angry. He might not even know that [an officers is] there. You need
to make sure that he knows...

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